The kinetics of business involves evolution of ideas into documents of many sorts. Ideas originate in the human mind, but for ideas to be developed and broadly communicated, transcription to at least printed form must be accomplished. With the development of computer systems, this process of transcription has become one of first creating a digital document, which can then be manipulated in many ways, communicated around the world, and quickly printed in many forms. People who work with ideas and documents today have access to tools unprecedented even twenty years before this patent application, mostly computer-based. People in a business setting, and even at home with the rapid development of personal computers, have at their fingertips word processing applications, powerful graphics programs, scanners and optical character recognition, modems, satellite links, and more. Computers that execute these powerful applications are commonly linked over wide area networks and the world-wide network over the telephone system known as the Internet.
Unfortunately,when people travel, the tools they have at home and in the office are not always available. There are, of course, portable computers and recorders, and even small portable scanners, but the convenience of having fellow workers, research people, and clerical aid is not generally available. This difficulty manifests itself importantly at the first instance of creativity, that of getting ideas in communicable form. Away from the office and home, in a motel room, a plane or a train, transcribing ideas may be a challenge.
In this circumstance a person has at least access to a recording device, and may record their ideas for later transcription to digital, machine-readable form, and into printed matter. There are both tape-based and electronic memory devices. Tape-bases devices can record many minutes of monologue, but are typically bulky, and can be prone to poor quality recording. Digital electronic recording systems have limited capacity and can typically record only at most a few minutes, and are thus useful only as message machines.
Another difficulty with recorders of all types is that they are apparatus that must be carried along when traveling, and if misplaced or lost, all the contents are lost as well.
Regardless of the type of recording device a person might carry and use, it is necessary after recording ideas to carry the recorder to a person to play back the recording and transcribe the text. What is needed is a system that allows a person away from typical office equipment to have ideas communicated and transcribed without having to physically carry and operate a recording apparatus and deliver recording media to others for transcription.